Joseph Yoder, The Refactory: Joseph W. Yoder from The Refactory, Inc., has worked on the architecture, design and implementation of software projects dating back to 1985. These projects range from stand-alone to client-server applications, multi-tiered, databases, object-oriented, frameworks, human-computer interaction, collaborative environments, web-based, and domain-specific visual languages. Joe is the author of over two-dozen published patterns and has been working with patterns for a long time, writing his first pattern paper in 1995. Recently Joseph?s focus has been on how to build dynamic and adaptable systems and he has been providing analysis, design, and mentoring along with writing papers to reflect these experiences.

Tutorial number: GP1

Architectures that can dynamically adapt to changing requirement are sometimes called "reflective" or "meta" architectures. We call a particular kind of reflective architecture an "Adaptive Object-Model" architecture. An Adaptive Object-Model is a system that represents classes, attributes, relationships, and behavior as metadata. It is a model based on instances rather than classes. Users change the metadata (object model) to reflect changes to the domain model. These changes modify the system's behavior. In other word, it stores its Object-Model in XML files or in a database and interprets it. Consequently, the object model is adaptive; when the descriptive information for the object model is changed, the system immediately reflects those changes. We have noticed that the architects of a system with Adaptive Object-Models often claim this is the best system they have ever created, talking about its flexibility, power, and eloquence. At the same time, many developers find them confusing and hard to work with. This is due in part because the developers do not understand the architecture. This tutorial will give a description of the Adaptive Object-Model architectural style and will make it easier for developers to understand and build these types of systems.

Advanced: Knowledge of object and frameworks is required; specifically the GOF and Analysis Patterns and Reflective Architectures can be helpful.